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RimWorld, the popular sci-fi colony management game by Ludeon Studios, offers a dynamic and immersive gameplay experience. However, the modding community has taken this already fantastic game to new heights, introducing an array of modifications that can enhance your gaming experience in countless ways. Once you install mods from the Steam Workshop, you’ll never go back to Vanilla RimWorld, as the differences will be drastic.
Understanding Mods in RimWorld
Before we dive into the best mods, it’s essential to understand how to manage and install them. You’re going to want to make sure that the mods you pick are compatible with each other. Popular mods with known conflicts are often stated in the information section on the mods page, but generally, you should expect any two mods that alter the same thing to conflict with each other. For example, a mod that edits the visuals of your pawns will conflict with another mod doing the same thing.
Likewise, avoid using outdated mods or mods that aren’t compatible with your current version of RimWorld. If you update your game, you should update your mods too. It’s best to turn off automatic updates if you plan on heavily modding RimWorld, as a single update can throw everything out of whack.
You also need to consider mod load order. The order mods load is crucial, as some mods rely on others being loaded first in order to work properly. Generally, any libraries should be loaded first, as this will avoid any load order conflicts.
When it comes to saves, you should always be backing them up, especially if you’re installing multiple mods or any new mods that have the potential of corrupting your save file. It’s good practice to back up your saves before making any major changes to your mod load order or the mods you’re using.
With that out of the way, let’s take a look at the best RimWorld mods you should install to improve your gaming experience. From gameplay enhancements to graphical updates, these mods will take your RimWorld colony to a whole new level you never even dreamed possible.
The Best Rimworld Mods
EdB Prepare Carefully
This mod allows you to customize your starting colonists, gear, and resources. You can fine-tune your initial setup to create a balanced and well-prepared colony. This is a must-have if you like to have more control over your initial starting colonists. You can change everything from their traits to starting equipment and animals.
Hospitality
Hospitality introduces new gameplay elements, enabling you to host travelers and potentially recruit them. It adds depth to the social interactions within your colony. It turns the almost baseless interactions you have with caravans and travelers into more meaningful and potentially beneficial conversations.
RimHUD
RimHUD enhances the user interface by providing detailed information about your colonists and visitors, making it easier to manage their needs and activities. The base RimWorld UI is fairly bland, making RimHUD a great addition to any RimWorld player.
Allow Tool
This mod streamlines many in-game tasks, making management more efficient. It allows you to select all items of a specific type and queue up orders for various tasks. We all know how annoying it is going around and individually selecting items that are forbidden, allowing your colonists to carry them to a stockpile. Luckily, this mod fixes just that and more.
Hand Me That Brick
With Hand Me That Brick, colonists will prioritize hauling items for construction and rebuilding, reducing the need for micromanagement. It can seem like it takes forever for colonists to construct larger buildings, but this mod fixes just that, allowing your colony to grow quickly without taking much time away from other tasks.
Colony Manager
Colony Manager helps you automate resource and work management by setting tasks based on defined parameters, simplifying the management of larger colonies. You can automatically clear trees in an area, harvest animals or predators in an area, and more with Colony Manager.
Prepare Landing
Prepare Landing lets you easily select your landing site before starting your colony, giving you ultimate control over the start of your game. You can even apply different filters, giving you a unique combination of hexes to choose from. Pair this mod with EdB Prepare Carefully, and you’ve got ultimate control over the start of your life on a new world.
Animal Variety Coats
Animal Variety Coats adds a range of new textures and fur patterns for animals, making the wildlife in RimWorld more visually appealing and diverse. This mod isn’t exactly game-changing, but it does help the world feel more alive rather than seeing the same off-white Muffalo in every game.
More Furniture
More Furniture expands the available furniture options, allowing for greater customization of your colony’s interiors. It includes new beds, chairs, and more. Vanilla RimWorld doesn’t offer much in the way of customizing your colony and really only provides the barebones, making More Furniture a must-have if you plan on treating RimWorld as an immersive colony simulator.
Psychology
Psychology introduces a broader range of mental states and reactions for colonists, creating more complex and diverse interpersonal dynamics. While the base game does have fairly interesting social mechanics and interactions, Psychology turns it up to an 11 and makes your game feel more realistic, if not allowing for funny interactions between your pawns.
Combat Extended
Combat Extended introduces realistic ballistics, ammunition types, and an overhaul of the combat system. It adds depth and challenge to RimWorld’s combat mechanics, which might seem flawed or dull in vanilla RimWorld. Combat Extended reworks the bullet and melee system, rebalances armor and shields, as well as medical things like bleeding and limb toughness. Definitely install this one if you want to improve combat mechanics.
RimQuest
RimQuest offers a variety of narrative events, quests, and challenges to keep the storytelling aspect of RimWorld engaging and dynamic. While the default storytellers offer unique situations, it can get dull after a while, making RimQuest a much needed upgrade to keep RimWorld fresh and new.
Rim of Madness – Vampires
This mod introduces vampires as a new faction, offering unique challenges and opportunities for storytelling within your colony. This might not be for everyone, but adding vampires to RimWorld can be a great way to bring some high fantasy to your sci-fi world.
Dinosauria
We’ve all been there. You’re playing RimWorld, have a huge successful colony, and think, “Man, this game really needs a Pteranodon.” Well, you’re in luck because Dinosauria adds just that and more. Featuring 51 dinosaurs and 9 prehistoric plants, this mod spices up your game like you wouldn’t believe.
Alpha Animals
Alpha Animals brings an array of new creatures to RimWorld, each with unique abilities and challenges. While the game isn’t necessarily devoid of wildlife, Alpha Animals turns it up to an 11, adding over a hundred creatures to the diverse biomes of your world.
Glitter Tech
Glitter Tech introduces advanced technology and factions that wield it. It offers a higher level of challenge and rewards for players looking to take their colonies to a more advanced technological level. Glitter Tech adds energy weapons, new armor, bionic limbs and organs, more power generation, and a lot more. This mod is a favorite in the community and should be used by everyone looking to improve late-game RimWorld.
Wrap Up
RimWorld’s modding community has created a rich and diverse ecosystem of modifications that can transform and enhance your gaming experience. Whether you’re looking for gameplay enhancements, quality-of-life improvements, visual upgrades, new challenges, or storytelling opportunities, there are mods to suit your preferences.
Remember to manage your mods carefully, ensuring compatibility and load order, and regularly back up your saves. By embracing the best mods that RimWorld has to offer, you can elevate your colony management experience to new heights.
